1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is generally directed to message simulators and simulation processors.
2. Background of the Invention
Many systems must be developed to interact with other systems. In developing a first system, one needs to understand how this first system will interact with other second systems. As shown in prior art FIG. 1, a first system 10 will have to send commands/requests to a second system 20, which will send responses back to the first system 10. However, these other systems may also be under development and thus cannot be used in developing the first system. For example, someone may be developing a first system such as a graphical user interface, which will interact with other systems of an overall telecommunication system, for example. For certain messages sent by the first graphical user interface system, one must know how a second system of the overall telecommunication system will react, and what responses will be received therefrom.
A first problem that arises is that although the two systems must interact together, different people may be working on the two different systems, which are both under development. Further, although one must understand how the first system interacts with other systems in order to properly develop it, the other system may not have been built and similar interaction problems may exist which inhibit its development.
In the past, these problems were solved by building simulators, wherein the simulator was able to simulate expected responses received from the first system. However, it was often difficult to build effective simulators. Further, the cost to build these simulators was very high and took a long time to develop. This tended to make development and testing of the first system much harder and had a negative impact on development time and cost. Thus, a need exists for developing a simple way to test various aspects of interactive system components under development.